Speakers

The following speakers have expressed keenness in speaking at our event:

Speaker 1: Cherian George – Globalization & Information Control Beyond Singapore Borders

In “Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation”, Dr. Cherian George’s famous and well-read book of essays, he appraised the government of Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s second Prime Minister, especially with regard to its performance and political style, election strategies and handling of dissenters, control of the media, co-opting of the intelligentsia, embrace of the business elite and advocacy of the ‘Asian Way’. This noteworthy commentary, in addition to his 10 years’ writing experience with the Straits Times and his vocal opinions on the political contributions of the media, arts and culture, make Cherian George an exciting keynote speaker and discussion leader.

Speaker 2: Shirley Lim Geok-lin – Globalization and the Individual Talent: Singapore Identity and Singlish

Professor of English and Women’s Studies at UC Santa Barbara
Professor of English at Hong Kong University, HK, China

“I am walking backwards into China/ where everyone looks like me/ and no one is astonished my passport/ declares I am foreign, only envious/ at my good luck. Speechless,/ without/ a tongue of China, I remember/ grandfather's hands, grandma's tears. On Causeway Bay, a hundred thousand / cousins walk beside me, a hundred/ hundred thousand brothers and sisters.” - From “Passports”

A native of Singapore and Malaysia who has lived in the USA for close to thirty years, the flexibility and variety of Professor Shirley Lim’s works and life experiences confound all attempts to locate her within the rigid confines of nation-states, Orientalist ideas of East-West ‘dichotomies’, or even the constructions of gender. Currently teaching English as a visiting Professor at Hong Kong University, Professor Lim has expanded the boundaries of Asian literature by embodying and creating a trans-national body of work that delves into the diasporic Asian experience, describing a ‘Trans-national Asia Pacific’ that juxtaposes and compares Asian-American and Asia-Pacific literature. This work, in addition to her previous position as Chair of Women’s Studies in UC Santa Barbara and various poetry book prizes that she has won, clearly mark her as an important figure in the literary world whose work pushes us to reconfigure our notions of ‘Asian-ness’ and ‘Asian-American-ness’.

Speaker 3: Linda Yuen-Ching Lim - Singapore: Place or Nation

Professor Lim is a Professor of Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University’s International Institute. She has published numerous journal articles, monographs and book papers, and has consulted for various organisations including United Nations agencies, US companies and private think tanks. She has also been frequently quoted by the international business press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Business Times (Singapore). She will speak on Singapore’s current economic development issues from a macro political and economic perspective, drawing on the various popular theories that Singapore’s government has followed, such as the concepts of ‘Competitive Advantage of Nations’, ‘Global War for Talent’ and ‘Cool Cities’. Professor Lim will also critique these theories by outlining the political and social contradictions they create.

Speaker 4: Alfian Bin Sa’at - Intersections of Sexuality and Race in Singapore

Alfian Bin Sa’at was born in Singapore in 1977. A Malay-Muslim of Minang, Javanese and Hakka descent, he is regularly referred to as Singapore's "enfant terrible", known for his provocative works that span the genres of poetry, fiction and plays. His second poetry collection,“The History of Amnesia” is said by The Straits Times to remind one “relentlessly of the human potential - and therefore a society's potential - for shutting our senses to disease we might have helped aggravate, or for daring to look unflinchingly at the roots of our suffering.” He has also been hailed by Malaysia's “The New Straits Times” as “one of the most acclaimed poets in his country...a prankish provocateur, libertarian hipster.” Some of his more notable plays include “sex.violence.blood.gore,” which suffered from censorship cuts at the hands of the State, “Asian Boys Vol.1” which employed camp aesthetics to examine the homosexual milieu in Singapore, "The Optic Trilogy," an attempt to recuperate personal and idiosyncratic ways of perception under a surveillance State, and “Fugitives,” a play about inter-racial relations translated from English and which had its premiere in Mandarin. Alfian Bin Sa’at's interests range from gender politics, to Malay identity, to strategies of resistance to censorship as well as hegemonizing discourses.